Building 5G on the Foundation of 600 Global LTE Networks
The nearly 600 LTE networks worldwide will form the mobile broadband foundation to the next generation – 5G wireless technology.
5G Americas, the industry trade association and voice of 5G and LTE for the Americas, and RCR Wireless News announced the publication of New Horizons: The Roadmap to 5G by RCR’s Editor-in-Chief Sean Kinney, a report outlining key milestones in the progression of 5G technologies from LTE.
“5G standards development, testing, simulations, trials and deployments have shown rapid progress over the past few years," said Chris Pearson, President of 5G Americas. "These 5G experiences have boosted the momentum of progress with initial 5G network deployments coming in late 2018 and early 2019.”
In December 2017, the journey to 5G had a green light with the completion of the 3GPP standards for Non-Standalone 5G New Radio (NSA 5G NR). This formal adoption by 3GPP set in motion concrete plans for deployments.
To support user expectations toward 5G, service providers continue to upgrade LTE networks, taking advantage of the spectral and user experience benefits of technologies like carrier aggregation, Licensed Assisted Access, 4X4 MIMO and 256 QAM. In fact, some of the more than 250 LTE-Advanced networks, using radio equipment available on the market, can upgrade certain elements to standard-compliant 5G through simple upgrades.
Edited by Daniëlle Kruger
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